Fire Starter
by Prosper-the-XVIII
Summary: Gender-reversed continuation of Ghost Hunter. Baela is alone and on the run, her entire clan dead. But as the mystery of what happend to them unfolds, Baela discovers a dark family secret kept from her for years. And for good reason...
1. Chapter 1

**Okay, I have a lot to say here. First of all, this set three years after Ghost Hunter, is slightly gender reversed and completely AU. Renn was killed instead of Bale by Thiazzi, along with another. Here's A guide to the swapped characters**

**Baela- Is a 17-year-old girl version of Bale. her name is pronounced Bale-a  
****Seeama- 13, Baela's younger sister and the equivelent to Detlan  
****Astrid- Asrif, though she was killed along with Renn.  
****Detlanaa- Baela and Seeama's mother and the leader of the Seal Clan. N.B- Being a gender-reversed story, the Seal Clan kind of operates backwards; the girls do all the macho stuff and the guys stay at home. Detlanaa's mate was supposedly killed in the Great Fire and she nearly died from the sickness that took seeama's twin, Kerisazza  
Vexia- Detlanaa's sister and second in command  
Twilight and Mist- Baela and Detlanaa's dogs**

**That's about everything, so, I present; Fire Starter!**

* * *

Fire. Blood. Screaming. This is all Baela can see and hear as she scales up the cliff, trying to avoid being cooked alive by the enormous fire that had swallowed her camp. She can't turn back, but she's watching everything she loves burn. Then, as she reaches the top, a silky smooth male voice says

"I told you I'd get you, Baela!"

The man speaking lets out an ear-splitting cackle that chills Baela to her bones, and stands on her fingers. Stands on her fingers, making her let go of the ledge and fall back into the inferno. Somehow, she lands in water, but quickly her lungs are bursting, screaming out for air. The silence under the water is so deep; she can hear her heart beating. She won't give in to the suffocating pull of the Sea Mother. She swims upwards, and is back in realness.

* * *

Someone – something – was playing around with Baela's visions. She had known this for the past moon. In that time, she had lost count of the times she had seen Seeama, Detlanaa, Torak, Wolf, Darkfur and Pebble die, each time in an equally unpleasant way, the amount of times she had relived Astrid and Renn's last moments, but this was the worst one. And it had seemed the most real. This was the third time she had had this nightmare, the third time she had woken up screaming, drenched in her own sweat. Each time, she had dismissed it as just a mere bad dream, but she knew this was far more sinister. It had happened earlier, too, when her skinboat capsized. She knelt in her shelter, and wondered what this could mean. If only Astrid was still alive. Or Renn. They'd have listened, explained it, and helped. She needed someone to talk to. Her options at the moment were Larc, her cousin, Detlanaa, Seeama, Twilight, her dog, Dark or Fin-Kedinn. Larc wouldn't listen. Detlanaa would listen far too much and worry for the safety of the clan, which, if it was just simply a bad dream, would make them both look stupid. Seeama would panic. She tried Twilight, but that wasn't much help. Torak, Dark and Fin-Kedinn were in the Forest, a whole day's skinboating to the east. So she would just have to keep it in until she found someone else. Or, she thought, until the worst happened…

* * *

Again, Baela found herself having the dream the next night. Except, the man on the cliff wasn't there and she felt as if she had burned her shoulder, which was new. She could _feel _it for the as well, the intense heat, the choking black smoke, the mind-numbing pain in her arm, the strain on her half-asleep muscles as she climbed…this had never happened in the nightmare before.

"Wait…" She said aloud, as she reached the top of the crag. "This isn't a dream. This is REALLY HAPPENING!"


	2. Chapter 2

After a lot of persuasion, Detlanaa finally got her dog, Mist, into her skinboat. Under normal circumstances, she would've fought valiantly to save as many people as possible, being the Clan Leader, but by the time she had woken, half the island had gone up in flames. The only shelters that were still standing were Baela and Seeama's shared one and her own. When she had gone into Baela's shelter, she was gone. Her axe, knife, pack, and medicine pouch were missing, so she hoped that she had either gone in her skinboat, or got herself to higher ground. She knew that Seeama had got out somehow, as she had found a trail of footprints that were unmistakeably Seeama's. Slender, high arched…and she had been walking on her toes on one foot, limping. She could at least take comfort in the fact that both her daughters were probably alive…for now.

As she set off, a sudden thought came to her. Baela had said she had been nightmares about this happening for ages. When she ignored her visions, they just kept coming back. Oh Baela, thought Detlanaa. Why couldn't you have told me?

* * *

Seeama had run faster than she ever had, since the incident with Notched Fin, the angered Hunter. She didn't know or care where she was going, but she knew that she needed to get there fast. Anywhere was safer than here. Baela, her mother, everyone was gone as far as she knew, and she couldn't think about anything else. She had grabbed a spare skinboat and paddle on her way out of camp, but had no idea what use they'd be. The other islands would be a good place to start, with the Kelp, Cormorant and Dolphin clans. Or the Otter camp, in the middle of Lake Axehead. Her father had been Otter clan, so hopefully they would accept her when she said – and proved (she had a little slate otter necklace made by her father, with his, her mother, and her own clan tattoos on the back) – that she was kin. Besides, Baela had told her that the saying they lived by is "A stranger is my guest until proven my enemy". That might help her. As she set off in her borrowed skinboat, wobbling frightfully due to the fact she was three summers out of practice, she decided the safest bet would be Otter clan. Now, she just had to get there…

* * *

Baela threw herself off the Crag, diving into the sea below. As she hoped, she avoided the rocks and landed in the breathtakingly cold water. She almost cried out when the salt water got into the wound in her shoulder. She realized too late that she had forgotten her skinboat.

Then, a howling black shape came flying down from the cliff. Oh, Twilight, thought Baela, sometimes I think you might be a bit TOO loyal…

The dog landed in the water, and licked her face.

"Right, come on then, best get out of here" said Baela to her dog. She knew there was a list of things she needed to do:

1. Find Torak and/or the Raven Clan.

2. Find out who set fire to her island, because that kind of thing doesn't happen by accident and who was mucking about with her visions.

3. Find out more about her father

4. Avenge the deaths of her family and clan.

5. Keep Twilight out of Wolf's way (he really looked down his nose at dogs, so it was a good idea to keep the pair of them separate.)

To do all of that, she would need to get to the Forest first. Since her skinboat had probably gone up in flames ages ago, there was no choice. She would have to swim for it.


	3. Chapter 3

Detlanaa didn't have a clue where she was or where she was going, but she knew too well that it was snowing loads and blowing a gale. It had been a few days since the destruction of the Bay of the Seals, and at the moment she suspected that she was somewhere nearing the Far North.

Her legs were shaking with fatigue, and all she had to keep her warm was her gutskin parka, which really wasn't doing its job, but she couldn't stop. Not now. She had to. She couldn't. There was a battle between her nerves and heart going on inside her head. Nerves won, and she decided she would need to build an ice shelter before anything else. It was tiring, hellish work, trying to hollow out a snow drift that kept collapsing in on itself. When she finally had some kind of useable shelter, she got Mist and her skinboat inside. Then she crawled in. Thank the Sea Mother that it easily accommodated everything. Then she and Mist had to eat. After putting a scrap of dried cod onto the roof of the shelter as an offering to her clan guardian and the Sea Mother (this felt strange as she was two daywalks away from both, but it would have felt stranger not to have done it), she gave Mist a piece of salmon and a few handfuls of wood sorrel and pignuts, and then ate the rest herself. She would need to hunt tomorrow, but she pushed that thought to the back of her mind. After that, she let herself fall into a deep and well-earned sleep.

* * *

Baela finally reached shore. She had lost all sense of time when she was swimming but she guessed it had been several days, weeks even since she left the Seal Island. Twilight, on the other hand, could have got there and back twice in the time it had taken Baela just to get halfway. Baela knelt on the ground, panting, and then sicked up a stomachfull of murky seawater, kelp and other things she must've swallowed on her way.

"Don't eat that!" she snapped at Twilight, who was putting her nose to the stinking mess. The look on Twilight's face plainly said _why not?_

Baela stretched and then winced. She noticed the burn on her shoulder. Four or so days in water had certainly not done it any good. She put her hand to it, Pain seared through her body and her palm came away a faint yellowish red colour. NOT a good sign. It was bad enough that it seemed to be bleeding, which was _not_ supposed to be happening, but it looked infected as well. She shook the contents of her medicine pouch onto the rocks. Everything had either gone mouldy or was soaking wet. She stared at the reddy-orange gloop in her medicine horn.

Well, she thought, unless I need Death Marks, which is a bit over-extreme, none of this will be any use.

She then stood up and started to wring the water in her hair out, but a three pronged trident for snaring souls pushed her to the ground again. The voice of the man holding it sounded a bit like her own, and oddly familiar.

"Who are you?" He asked harshly.

Hoping that her face was still caked in ash, obscuring her clan tattoos, Baela responded "Who's asking?"

"Hold your tongue!" snapped the man. Baela noticed in growing fear that the voice was not where the similarities ended. He had shoulder length tawny hair and Otter clan tattoos, but he had the same compelling blue eyes and distinct, high-boned features as her. Weirdest of all, he had a notch taken out of his left nostril, in the exact same place as she did. This could well have been completely coincidental, but she had a very bad feeling that it meant something. He was bare-chested, and had some kind of mark tattooed on his breastbone. "Well, WHO?"

Again Baela was banking on the hope that her tattoos were not visible, so he wouldn't pick out the lie she was about to tell.

"Sialot. Kelp clan. You?" As she spoke she started fiddling around with her amulets. She had cast the diverbird claw that used to hang round her neck into the flames on her island. It had supposed to have been for hunting and clan luck, and in her anger she had torn it off and thrown it into the inferno, muttering darkly "Can't be much use then…"

However she still had a seal rib and clay otter, and she began twisting the sinew round her little finger to make her captor think she was up to something. It worked, and as he was focusing on her, she sprang up on her shoulders, sending pain shooting down her injured arm, but ignored this and kicked his hand hard, making him let the trident go. She then took one last good look at him, drinking in every line of his face and angle of his cheekbone, and sprinted off.


	4. Chapter 4

Seeama lay on the beach, panting. It had been days since she'd left the island, although it was only supposed to be a day's skinboating to here. She thought about the day before the disaster on the island. Baela had fallen out of her skinboat, and had gone back to the shelter that they shared in a mood.  
"Look, for the last time, I told you, I saw my name-soul in the water, got dizzy, fell in and started daydreaming, ok?" she'd snapped, peeling off her wet jerkin. She was obviously shaken, and had tried badly to hide that fact under anger.

"Yeah but what if it wasn't just a daydream? What if it was one of your visions? What was it?"

"You don't need to know!"

Seeama had managed to stay composed, but Baela was clearly making no attempt whatsoever at controlling her temper.

"Look, Baela. What if it was a vision? What if it was and it – it happened tonight?" She could hardly force the words out of her mouth. "What if…what if one of us died and that was the last thing you ever said to me? Because I know you would never forgive yourself, and neither would I. Just think about that."

I was right, thought Seeama sadly, and now she's gone…

"Baela?!" called Torak desperately. She should've been back from her island three days ago, and he was beginning to fear the worst. He had slunk out from the Raven camp under cover of darkness, and slept here for the last two nights. As twilight began to fall, he tried one more time. "BAAAAEEEEELLLLLLAAAAAA!"

But answer there came none.

Detlanaa opened her eyes, and then automatically shut them again. The front of her shelter had caved in, letting the glare in and the last thing she needed at the moment was to go snow-blind. She crawled out of the shelter and, making her eyelids into slits, stood up and walked right into a tree. Where did that come from? No, wait, not a tree in fact, but a MAN.

"Wha…who…Inuktiluk?"

The White Fox leader pushed one of his dogs away from her and peered through his seal-pelt eye guard. It took him a while to recognise her, as last time he had seen her, she had hair down to her ankles and was dying of the same mysterious sickness that had already taken five members of her clan, including her youngest daughter. This woman had a shoulder-length lopsided horsetail, but she had Seal clan tattoos and the cankered scarring on her forehead, marking her as a survivor of the sickness, so she could well have been who she said she was.

"Detlanaa? What are you doing here?"

Holding Mist back from the sled dog, Detlanaa replied:

"I- Look, long story."

"Come back to camp with me and you can tell me then!" He said, tossing her a beaver hide mantle. "Here, stick this on, you look frozen half to death."

Detlanaa put it o quickly and felt warmth course through her body.

Tying Mist with the other sled dogs, Detlanaa got on the sled with Inuktiluk and headed off into the distance.


	5. Chapter 5

**Oh, a little thing twhich I forgot to say. Baela has a kind of long talon-slash scar right down her left eye caused by a sea eagle flying at her face when she was around seven summers old. Just thought you should know that.**

* * *

Baela sat up a tree and thought. Her father had been Otter clan, but he was killed in the Great Fire that shattered the Soul Eaters. That voice…she knew she had heard it somewhere. And the man looked uncannily similar to the man in her dream and, for that matter, her father. Her thoughts drifted to the scar on his nose, and her hand slipped up to her own. She didn't remember how she'd got it, scars weren't generally something you worried about; most people had them. She herself had the talon-mark over her eye; the nose thing and a long, raised knife slash up her right arm. Detlanaa had been covered in them, from various hunting and battle incidents, plus the strange bark-like scarring on her forehead, marking her as a survivor of the sickness that had struck six summers ago. Even Torak had them, the weird little line through his clan-tattoos, and the big scar on his chest where he'd cut out the mark of the Soul-Eaters. She remembered the mark on her captor's chest. It all added up. Her visions, the fire. She had put two and two together, and came up with four…but she didn't feel any better. All she and Torak had done, all Renn and Astrid had died for, all for nothing. There was an eighth Soul Eater. And, oh horror of horrors, he was her father. Hanteshku the Otter clan mage. The weight that had lifted off her shoulders after Eostra the Eagle Owl mage's death suddenly fell back onto her with such force that it nearly squashed her flat. And then she remembered Torak's reaction when Renn revealed that Seshru was her mother. She choked with a silent sob and nearly fell out of the tree. She felt scared.

* * *

Poor Tall Tailless, thought Wolf. He had been at the edge of the Great Wet for many Lights and Darks, calling out for the pale-pelted female tailless in the strange, high-pitched growl that was his way of talking. Wolf loped up to him and said.

_Where is the pale-pelt?_

_Away. Can you smell her?_

_No. Shadow. Hunted. Fire-stone. _

Tall Tailless hadn't understood. Wolf ran round in circles, confused, and then caught a whiff of delicious fatty fish-dog. He ran up to it, Tall Tailless following, painfully slowly, but Wolf was disappointed when he discovered it wasn't fish-dog at all, just a few long, whitish hairs snagged on a bush. Tall Tailless was happy though.

_That's hers. The pack-sister._

_But she's not-breath!_

_No, the pale-pelted one who smells of fish-dog. She's here!_

Wolf wasn't bothered. He just wanted to have something to eat, but if his pack-brother was happy, then so was he.

* * *

Baela had lost the will to live. She couldn't face reality, and was prepared to just sink her knife through her heart and get it over with.

No, she told herself. If you were to give in now, you'd just be giving the Soul eaters what they want.

She jumped down out the tree – and almost fell over with fright when she saw a group of people, all wielding loaded bows. The figure leading them lowered his weapon and said in surprise: "Baela?"

She felt herself go red with embarrassment. She had just run into a Raven clan hunting party. "Fin-Kedinn?"

"Well, what brings you here?"

"Look, it's a pretty long story. Where's Torak?"

"No idea. He left two nights ago – Poi, put that down for goodness sake!" he snapped at the Raven girl, who was poising to shoot. "Sorry about that. You need to come back to camp with us and tell me."

She turned to pick up what was left of her gear, and Fin-Kedinn burst out "What in the name of the Spirit did you do to your shoulder?"

"That kind of ties in with what I was going to tell you…" Judging by his reaction, Baela was beginning to picture what her shoulder might look like. She had had past experience with that kind of thing, and knew exactly the kind of injury that caused someone to act like that. Only now he had pointed it out did she notice the pain. It really was absolutley excruciating. She was really beginning to regret just leaving it and hoping for the best.

* * *

Back in his shelter in the Raven camp, Baela told Fin-Kedinn her whole story. She had enjoyed seeing him and Dark again, but this was little relief from the thoughts that currently fogged her brain and made her head swim. Fin-Kedinn sighed and said. "Baela, I understand and I think there's something I need to tell you. About your father – "

"It's him isn't it? I was right, wasn't I?" she shouted in anger. "Who else knows? How long have you been keeping this from me?"

"It's only your mother and I who know the truth. She was going to tell you, I swear on my three souls. But she never got the chance. We've known since your mother was carrying the twins."

"You've been keeping this from me…for 11 whole summers? All that time, you've been lying to me!" She stood up, barely able to contain the anger building up inside her.

"Baela, don't think of it like that. We were trying to keep you safe –"

That tore it. She threw the waterskin that was in her hands across the shelter, and it hit him full in the face, exploding on impact. She expected him to shout at her, get angry, but he just wiped the water out of his eyes, laughing.

Baela was outraged. She was trying to emphasize a point, and he had just laughed.

"Trying to keep me safe?! From what exactly?" she burst out. "Since Renn died, you haven't known what its like. To worry day in, day out who the next victim of the Soul Eaters is going to be, praying that it's not you, or your family. After you've been through all that, you just feel like you want to die, when you find out that your father was working with them, and to have him take everything away from you! Look, I'm leaving!"

Now anger was beginning to show slightly on Fin-Kedinn's face.

"Baela, go now and you're setting off blind. We'll give you supplies, and you can leave after daymeal."

"First light"

"First light" Fin-Kedinn corrected himself. He must've just felt annoyed at the mention of Renn, the niece that had meant the world to him until she had been murdered by Thiazzi two summers ago. "Now get some rest. You look like you need it."

* * *

Baela had to leave now. It was several hours before first light, but she needed to find Torak. She had had a vision again. About him. He was soul-sick again, but this time dying. It might have been Hanteshku messing about again, but she was still worried sick. Starving, she took out a salmon cake that the Ravens had given her from her pack, and crammed it into her mouth whole. Immediately after swallowing, she began to feel drowsy. Poison, she thought as she began to sway. How could I have been that stupid?


	6. Chapter 6

Baela woke up, but she found that, to her horror, she couldn't move. Her hair was loose and down to her shins in an unbroken, silky curtain, and she was wearing some kind of weird gown, but her wrists were tied behind her back. She tried to struggle, but gave up when her head hit stone. She seemed to be tied to some kind of altar.

"Hello Baela," her father's voice rang out in the dark cave. The same light, calm tone that had taught her to skinboat, calmed her when the sea-eagle had gashed her eye ten summers ago, muttered encouragement when she was out hunting in a skinboat for the first time, dried her tears when Kerisazza had died six winters ago, and her mother had been dying, now belonged to the man who was holding a knife above her heart, prepared to cut it out, or do something equally vile. She shut her eyes tight, ready to die…

* * *

The wolf had sprung out of nowhere, but had clamped his jaws hard on Baela's father's arm, making him drop his knife. You didn't have to speak wolf to understand what he was saying. _Move and I break your arm. Touch her, or the knife, you won't have an arm to break. _

Somebody was standing behind her, and she recognised the rough, cool hands that began to untie the bindings round her wrists. She couldn't see it, but she felt his dark hair sitting on her forehead, his face down, concentrating on freeing her. "Torak…" she breathed. He flashed her a smile, and pulled her to her feet. "T-Torak..." She was stammering now, her voice shaking out of complete shock. "What...How did you know where I was? What's going on?"


End file.
